Greater Peoria, Illinois is part of The Hub’s second Building Resilient Economies in Coal Communities (BRECC) cohort and the team is getting ready to put in the work. Like so many other communities, the Greater Peoria BRECC team is focused on fostering and supporting a growing and thriving small business community. To do so, they are taking a bird’s eye view of what it would take to best support this kind of economic diversity growth.

Greater Peoria has already been working to diversify their economy after being dominated by one major single employer. While they have seen strides in diversifying their economy, the region is still reliant on a handful of major employers. This is something that, through BRECC, the team is hoping to create plans to amplify in a major way.

“Efforts at further diversification are not meant to abandon cornerstones like manufacturing, agriculture and healthcare, but instead find complementary companies that can take advantage of the region’s assets,” said Kathie Brown, the Director of Rural Outreach and Development Greater Peoria Economic Development Council. “Business attraction efforts, for example, highlight our undeniable industrial strengths such as a robust transportation network, low cost of doing business, and a well-trained and available workforce. This includes luring traditional manufacturers, positioning the region for future-focused industries like clean-energy and electric vehicles, and investigating industries like biomedical manufacturing that could benefit from the region’s manufacturing and healthcare strengths.”